Friday, January 13, 2017

In December, on the day we released for Christmas break, our campus hosed a social. Now, I know what you are thinking, but it was not a dance. It was a time where students could sign up for activities that they are interested in for a day. Each student filled out a form the week before, choosing five activities that they would like to participate in, then they were given a schedule of four activities to last them the half day.

One of the activities that was offered to the students was our new Makerspace. We were so excited to kickoff our Makerspace in such a fun way. The students were given two options for their time in our Makerspace, they could work on three maker challenges in one area, or create their own origami trees in another area.

It was definitely a hit. The students enjoyed creating things and figuring out how to make their creations work and solve the problem. Below are pictures of their creations.

I am currently preparing new challenges for students to complete when they come in for their recess time because we had so many students that were itching for more challenges! My plan is to have three to four challenges that will last two to three weeks each. Once the challenge is over I will display the student's projects and change out when the next challenges are completed.

Come back in the next couple of weeks to see updates about our Makerspace!

One of my New Year's Resolutions is to utilize this blog and post more often. There are amazing things going on in our library and I think that it is important to share!

One fun thing that is currently going on in the library is our rearrangements. Ms. Allen and I decided that it would make more sense to pull out our more popular series to a central location that would provide easier access to these heavily trafficked materials. There were a couple of things that prompted this decision. One being that some of the series that our students really like are written by many different authors. This causes issues when students are looking for specific series and they are scattered all over the place. Now they can find what they are looking for without frustration.

Another large change is our relocation of the professional collection for creation of a Makerspace. This section has been relocated to where reference previously lived because we needed a large area to begin creating our Makerspace. Our Makerspace kickoff was during the Christmas Social (more information in the Makerspace Kickoff Post)

Lastly we moved some of our genres within our fiction collection around. After the series had been relocated we had some empty shelves, which helped us move the Science Fiction collection to a more visible area and to create an award winner section as well as a featured books section.

We are very excited to continue to make our library the best that it can be and serve our students in the best way possible!

Monday, October 17, 2016

Recently I have been completing some screen-cast tutorials on topics that I thought that the students needed, or that I thought that there was some confusion on. Below are the ones that I have created so far, so hopefully the resource list will grow. If there are any videos that you would like me to create let me know in the comments and I will get them added!

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

I have had a very exciting beginning of the school year here at Sloan Creek! I am loving being in the library and seeing these wonderful kids everyday. One big change in the library is our flexible seating. According to research students can be more engaged when they are able to choose the seating that best fits their needs and personal style. Because of this I have transitioned a large portion of our library to a flexible seating option. So far our students are loving it!

We have added some interesting resources to our library and our library website, so when you get a chance check them out.

Good bye for now, I will be keeping you updated on new library developments soon!